Zynga's business model was never sustainable. In a short time, they became a bigger studio in the number of employees than some of the mega-studios like Ubisoft (which has 2100 employees) making nothing but crappy facebook and mobile games that depend on microtransactions.

Of course they should embrace austerity, they never should've let it grow bigger than 100 people in the first place.

I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for "microtransactions" being the goal of every game. I don't care if it is a free game. But if I drop some cash to buy a game then I don't want to be pressured to spend more money to actually play it.

RockofAges:Thoguh: I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for "microtransactions" being the goal of every game. I don't care if it is a free game. But if I drop some cash to buy a game then I don't want to be pressured to spend more money to actually play it.

Freemium ain't going anywhere for the next 5-10.

but for only $2.99 you can get a freemium zapper upgrade that will get rid of it now without all of that waiting! DO IT NOW AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS

Thoguh:I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for "microtransactions" being the goal of every game. I don't care if it is a free game. But if I drop some cash to buy a game then I don't want to be pressured to spend more money to actually play it.

its not just an issue of micro transactions, which can be done properly to add extra functionality, new maps, new characters, whatever. My beef with the freemium model for many FB or mobile games is that there's very little actual gameplay strategy. The game itself is terrible. All you're doing is clicking to plant crops, build hotels, feed your pet, or whatever, and your actions have little impact on the outcome, especially compared to the effects of buying whatever they're selling, which just gets you nowhere faster.

EvilEgg:Could it be that more people are discovering that their "games" suck?

they're a terrible company anyways, in many ways they surpassed early 80's Atari for shiatheaded-ness

RockofAges:Thoguh: I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for "microtransactions" being the goal of every game. I don't care if it is a free game. But if I drop some cash to buy a game then I don't want to be pressured to spend more money to actually play it.

Freemium ain't going anywhere for the next 5-10.

they're financially more stable than AAA games that's for sure, hopefully they stop being just glorified slot machines

dukeblue219:Thoguh: I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for "microtransactions" being the goal of every game. I don't care if it is a free game. But if I drop some cash to buy a game then I don't want to be pressured to spend more money to actually play it.

its not just an issue of micro transactions, which can be done properly to add extra functionality, new maps, new characters, whatever. My beef with the freemium model for many FB or mobile games is that there's very little actual gameplay strategy. The game itself is terrible. All you're doing is clicking to plant crops, build hotels, feed your pet, or whatever, and your actions have little impact on the outcome, especially compared to the effects of buying whatever they're selling, which just gets you nowhere faster.

thomps:RockofAges: Thoguh: I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for "microtransactions" being the goal of every game. I don't care if it is a free game. But if I drop some cash to buy a game then I don't want to be pressured to spend more money to actually play it.

Freemium ain't going anywhere for the next 5-10.

but for only $2.99 you can get a freemium zapper upgrade that will get rid of it now without all of that waiting! DO IT NOW AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS

dukeblue219:Thoguh: I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for "microtransactions" being the goal of every game. I don't care if it is a free game. But if I drop some cash to buy a game then I don't want to be pressured to spend more money to actually play it.

its not just an issue of micro transactions, which can be done properly to add extra functionality, new maps, new characters, whatever. My beef with the freemium model for many FB or mobile games is that there's very little actual gameplay strategy. The game itself is terrible. All you're doing is clicking to plant crops, build hotels, feed your pet, or whatever, and your actions have little impact on the outcome, especially compared to the effects of buying whatever they're selling, which just gets you nowhere faster.

That was my whole issue with Zynga's games, in both graphic and gameplay, they reminded me of nothing so much as the kind of games you used to be able to type in from a computer magazine and play on your C-64. I could never understand why people found them so addicting. I also hate the microtansaction model because it provides an incentive to make the game impossible/very frustrating to play unless you pay for the "upgrades"/extras

Almost 18 months after going public, Zynga is staving off fierce competition from newer or nimbler rivals that mimic its games.Supercell, founded in 2010, has scored with "Hay Day," an iPad game that contains elements resembling FarmVille.

Masso:Zynga should have remained small but tremendously profitable company. They instead chose to go apeshiat big eventhough it's unsustainable. Scaling down is really their only option.

their problem was the same as most high growth start-ups: early investors demanded an exit which means either an IPO or a buy out. in either case you have to scale like a motherf*cker. see also groupon.

1) Steal a game from someone else (Scrabble, Wheel of Fortune, etc)2) Tweak said game to cater to people's instinctive need to hoard complete sets of things.3) Load it down with ads and microtransactions made to feed that instinct to hoard.4) Profit

Their business model is based around building shiny computer-screen Skinner boxes - push button-spend money-get virtual food pellet. That they aren't swimming in cash has to be a sign of gross mismanagement.

theurge14:1) Steal a game from someone else (Scrabble, Wheel of Fortune, etc)2) Tweak said game to cater to people's instinctive need to hoard complete sets of things.3) Load it down with ads and microtransactions made to feed that instinct to hoard.4) Profit

Brilliant really. Seriously. Set aside the moralist component and the nerd rage.They did what Apple does.Find something like people like and modify it to meet the masses base human instincts, all while monetizing it.

thomps:Masso: Zynga should have remained small but tremendously profitable company. They instead chose to go apeshiat big eventhough it's unsustainable. Scaling down is really their only option.

their problem was the same as most high growth start-ups: early investors demanded an exit which means either an IPO or a buy out. in either case you have to scale like a motherf*cker. see also groupon.

Zynga's biggest failure was trying to use AAA market tactics with casual games. You can't flood the casual market, because most casuals can play one game for years and years. Once they were trying too hard to guide casuals to play newer games, it was over.Casuals just don't spend money. It's a market, but one where a very large demographic spend a very small amount per. Once you have their money, they're incredibly slow to latch onto something else, and your bottom line suffers over time. See also: the Wii.

Gone is the swagger that defined the early years, when Zynga's army of developers flooded the market with dozens of new titles

that's because they stole each and every one of the titles that they released, they have very few /original/ titles. They simply lifted the idea that someone else had, put some better graphics to it and claimed it as theirs. They don't create, they steal and there is no one else to steal from.

Magorn:dukeblue219: Thoguh: I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for "microtransactions" being the goal of every game. I don't care if it is a free game. But if I drop some cash to buy a game then I don't want to be pressured to spend more money to actually play it.

its not just an issue of micro transactions, which can be done properly to add extra functionality, new maps, new characters, whatever. My beef with the freemium model for many FB or mobile games is that there's very little actual gameplay strategy. The game itself is terrible. All you're doing is clicking to plant crops, build hotels, feed your pet, or whatever, and your actions have little impact on the outcome, especially compared to the effects of buying whatever they're selling, which just gets you nowhere faster.

That was my whole issue with Zynga's games, in both graphic and gameplay, they reminded me of nothing so much as the kind of games you used to be able to type in from a computer magazine and play on your C-64. I could never understand why people found them so addicting. I also hate the microtansaction model because it provides an incentive to make the game impossible/very frustrating to play unless you pay for the "upgrades"/extras

You're not considering the type of people that play those games. They don't want strategy where a decision now could impact their gameplay two days from now. They just want to click and get results.

AdamK:they're a terrible company anyways, in many ways they surpassed early 80's Atari for shiatheaded-ness

Pretty much all the Atari shiatheaded-ness was inflicted by Warner after they bought Atari. For younger farkers, they were the original IP-trolls. Basically imagine the first video game/computer company owned by a full fledged member of both the RIAA and MPAA and you have a pretty good idea of what Atari turned into. Internal management was at least as bad. In those days, games were made by one designer: circuits, software (in assembler), artwork, sounds, you name it. As far as management was concerned, these designers were "towel designers", Atari's money came from their brilliant management. One great idea was "use the E.T. IP and sales will skyrocket! We don't even need to make a game, people will buy them as collectors items..." (Atari made more E.T. cartridges than they ever made consoles, no wonder they bulldozed them into a landfill). I rather hope Warner doesn't do the same to Turbine.

From the article: "closed offices in Baltimore, Boston and Tokyo."So there's a chance Brian Reynolds might make games worth playing again?-left in February, so there's a chance.

AdamK:EvilEgg: Could it be that more people are discovering that their "games" suck?

they're a terrible company anyways, in many ways they surpassed early 80's Atari for shiatheaded-ness

RockofAges: Thoguh: I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for "microtransactions" being the goal of every game. I don't care if it is a free game. But if I drop some cash to buy a game then I don't want to be pressured to spend more money to actually play it.

Freemium ain't going anywhere for the next 5-10.

they're financially more stable than AAA games that's for sure, hopefully they stop being just glorified slot machines

I hope everyone is ready for when the AAAs follow EA's lead. They've announced every single game, even 60$ ones, will have microtransactions in the future.

It's just too easy to program in, and too lucrative not to. Weapons, racetracks, armor, items, coloration, quests, are all being rethought and broken down in way that can be sold piecemeal to you.

This has the added benefit of locking a game to an account, meaning piracy is reduced, but also having the added benefit of eliminating all borrowing and reselling of used games.

The next generation of games is going to be a strange one. They've finally figured out how to uniquely monetize interactive entertainment, and I doubt we're every going to see them roll it back.

BHShaman:theurge14: 1) Steal a game from someone else (Scrabble, Wheel of Fortune, etc)2) Tweak said game to cater to people's instinctive need to hoard complete sets of things.3) Load it down with ads and microtransactions made to feed that instinct to hoard.4) Profit

Brilliant really. Seriously. Set aside the moralist component and the nerd rage.They did what Apple does.Find something like people like and modify it to meet the masses base human instincts, all while monetizing it.

A very wise businessman once said to me: Nobody gets rich by blazing a trail. The rich one is the second guy to market who can coast in the tracks of the trailbalzer and learn form his mistakes for free

I've occasionally driven past their Mountain View office (near the Middlefield light rail station). They occupy the entire building, and from the outside it looks easily large enough for several hundred workers.

Magorn:A very wise businessman once said to me: Nobody gets rich by blazing a trail. The rich one is the second guy to market who can coast in the tracks of the trailbalzer and learn form his mistakes for free

That seems pretty obvious to me, trailblazers are certain kinds of people. They don't have a whole lot of fear and are totally into exploring their ideas. They're in it for the fun, not the money and as long as they have enough to pay the bills they really don't care that #2 makes more when it's a stolen idea. If you have to steal it, your income is limited (see - this thread and the predictability of Zynga needing to downsize). When you're the one who cranks out the money-grabbing ideas you really don't have all that much to worry about until you start having dificulty spotting the trend. What you are when you aim at being #2 is the weasel who's out to play the "got mine, fark you" game. That's pretty easy to spot, too you know. It's kind of hard to take ideas that no one wants to share with you anymore.

/not that it matters//everything you've thought of, so has someone else///slashies in three's

It was Jef Raskin that received a PhD for his thesis on the Graphical User Interface (GUI) at Penn State University in 1967. He coined the term QuickDraw, which is very important because if you ask any true Mac software developer (pre-NeXTStep) the will tell you that QuickDraw is the official name for the foundation software used to draw the GUI on the Apple Macintosh.

Xerox PARC was founded in 1970 as a division of Xerox Corporation, so its was impossible for Xerox PARC to have invented anything before Jef because they did not exist until three years after he was awarded his PhD for the very GUI that Apple used.

Jef then went on to be the "Father of the Macintosh" at Apple, based on the foundation he created in his 1967 thesis.

quiotu:thomps: Masso: Zynga should have remained small but tremendously profitable company. They instead chose to go apeshiat big eventhough it's unsustainable. Scaling down is really their only option.

their problem was the same as most high growth start-ups: early investors demanded an exit which means either an IPO or a buy out. in either case you have to scale like a motherf*cker. see also groupon.

Zynga's biggest failure was trying to use AAA market tactics with casual games. You can't flood the casual market, because most casuals can play one game for years and years. Once they were trying too hard to guide casuals to play newer games, it was over.Casuals just don't spend money. It's a market, but one where a very large demographic spend a very small amount per. Once you have their money, they're incredibly slow to latch onto something else, and your bottom line suffers over time. See also: the Wii.

i'm not sure i agree with that. hasn't one of their major issues with maintaining dominance over the casual market been that the attrition after a couple of months of play is huge? i thought that's the whole point behind flooding the market with new games on 2-3 month release cycles - trying to maintain the overall market share as people jump from latest casual game craze to the next

FTFA: It has trimmed 5 percent of its workforce, though its headcount of nearly 3,000 still dwarfs that of fierce rivals like Supercell, a Finnish company with 100 people that claims an equivalent amount of revenue

AdamK:EvilEgg: Could it be that more people are discovering that their "games" suck?

they're a terrible company anyways, in many ways they surpassed early 80's Atari for shiatheaded-ness

RockofAges: Thoguh: I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for "microtransactions" being the goal of every game. I don't care if it is a free game. But if I drop some cash to buy a game then I don't want to be pressured to spend more money to actually play it.

Freemium ain't going anywhere for the next 5-10.

they're financially more stable than AAA games that's for sure, hopefully they stop being just glorified slot machines

Actually, the FB slots are better, 'cuz they actually give you more to play with for free every few hours.